The archives of the articles, reviews, interviews and other ramblings written by Sarah E. Jahier (aka Fatally Yours).

Friday, April 30, 2010

Book Review: Jenny's Dance by Bruce Kaplan

Jenny’s Dance was originally published in
Australia in 1989, but after the small publisher went belly up the book
went out of print. Twenty years later author Bruce Kaplan made a few
small tweaks and decided to re-release the book himself in 2009.

Of course if you ask me, the book needs A LOT more editing despite its fascinating story…

After a traumatizing incident, journalist Michael Baird’s therapist
recommends he take a nice long vacation. Michael heads to the sleepy
resort town of Koala Bay, but it turns out things aren’t quite so quiet
there. A violent series of murders is being covered up by the local
authorities, murders which just might involve some young children with
high I.Q.’s. Though Michael has been warned not to get involved or cause
himself any undue stress, his journalistic instincts tell him otherwise
and he is soon in the thick of it. Can Michael find out who or what is killing the residents of Koala Bay before either the authorities or the killer(s) kill him first?

Jenny’s Dance has an intriguing
sci-fi/horror storyline, but unfortunately tends to get bogged down by
sloppy grammatical and punctuation errors and slim character
development.

First off, let’s get the obvious out of the way – apparently author
Bruce Kaplan has never heard of punctuation or it doesn’t exist in
Australia, because he uses it as little as possible. And by “as little
as possible” I mean it is usually just used at the end of sentences, if
you’re lucky. There are no quotation marks when dialogue is used, there
are no apostrophes – neither to mark possession nor to mark the omission
of letters (like “shouldn’t” for “should not”), there are no commas to
mark pauses in sentences – pretty much the only punctuation that is used
is the period at the end of sentences. I understand the creative
omission of punctuation in something like poetry, but in a novel it’s
kinda vital, doncha think? I had a hard time getting into the book (or
taking it seriously) because of the heinous misuse (no use?) of
punctuation. And the author even had a second time to fix all this
nonsense since this was his second time releasing the book!!

Secondly, the characters all feel and act like stereotypical
cardboard cut-outs (with about that much personality). The hero of the
novel has a tragic past, but overcomes it to solve the case and win the
girl…yada yada yada. There are the typical crooked cops and authorities,
the “creepy” kids (who aren’t all that fleshed out and not so creepy)
and the underdeveloped female characters. The female characters are
probably the flimsiest, and exist in the book to only play mothers or
love interests. Psh…I could go on a rant about this alone, but this book
has so many other problems that I’ll refrain. Just know that all of the
characters are stereotypical and aren’t that well fleshed out, making
the reader not care that much about them. Also, things happen to the
characters that just seem too convenient. Michael falls in love with a
local school teacher awfully fast (their relationship seemed a bit
forced and contrived) and he always happens to stumble upon bodies,
among other things. At times, even the dialogue and interactions between
people in the book seems off and a little stilted.

However, I will say that the storyline was intriguing and was the
only thing that kept me reading. Despite the poor use of punctuation and
the cardboard characters the idea behind the book was unique and
interesting. I liked how Kaplan kept me guessing as to who or what was
doing the killing and I especially liked entertaining the fact that it
could be kids sucking the brains out of victims. I also thought the
final explanation was satisfying and definitely not something you read
every day. Though in the end there is a sci-fi twist, I still enjoyed
the horror of the story (even though I had to sit through the horror of
the formatting).

If you can stomach sacrificing proper punctuation, grammar and decent characters for a cool story, you may want to check out Jenny’s Dance.
The title doesn’t really do the book any favors, nor is it really
relevant to the plot, but despite its flaws the actual story isn’t half
bad. Just be prepared to slog through a messy manuscript to get to the
gem of the story!